The cutout image of a police officer carved into the face of a
memorial at Tampa Police Headquarters is reflected in the window
of the department. The messages were created by children as a
tribute to the officers killed on Tuesday.[Times photo: Dan McDuffie]

AMPA -- This city's suffering and hope intersect at Madison and
Franklin streets in downtown.

Here, in front of Tampa Police Headquarters, is the black granite
memorial that has drawn hundreds of stunned police officers, grieving
relatives and sympathetic strangers since Tuesday.

They've left heaps of fresh flowers, framed poems and even an
American flag folded in a triangle in memory of detectives Randy
Bell and Ricky Childers and state Trooper James Crooks.

Originally, the memorial was planned for the old Police Headquarters
on N Tampa Street, a site virtually walled off from downtown by
Interstate 275. The building had rats and mildew, and the gritty
neighborhood around it once was known as "The Pit."

But last year Police Headquarters moved downtown, putting the
memorial to officers slain in the line of duty next to the oak-lined
park that serves as Tampa's town commons. The new location brought
the Police Department squarely into the civic life of the city
and set the stage for an outpouring of public support unlike anything
in memory.

"We really didn't put it there for that reason, but it's kind
of overwhelming," Detective Roberto Batista said Thursday. If
the memorial had gone up at the old Police Headquarters, "I don't
think it would have had the same impact because here the citizens
we serve actually get to see it."

This week, people have gathered at the memorial almost without
thinking. It began Tuesday afternoon, when former prosecutor Darrell
Dirks heard that two detectives he liked and respected had been
killed.

"I just left my office and I started walking and I walked down
toward the Tampa Police Department," he said. "When I walked past
the memorial, it just seemed like the thing to do," so he went
to a nearby store and bought two bunches of flowers.

Those were the first flowers left at the memorial, but since then
hundreds of people have made the same journey. Late Thursday,
Grady and Kathi Chapman drove all the way from Land O'Lakes to
pause before the memorial.

"It helps you deal with it," said Kathi Chapman, 53, a Winn Dixie
cashier. "I don't know the men, but I could picture the families
getting up in the morning and then not coming home from work .
. . It shows that people care."

The reaction has overwhelmed both police and J.J. Watts, the Tampa
sculptor who carved the life-sized cutout statue of an officer
in the memorial's face.

"I've been down there a couple of times just sort of standing
back, and I'm amazed that it's become a place where people could
express their feelings," she said. "It's almost altar-like."

That is no coincidence, said Dr. Stephen Happel, a Washington,
D.C., scholar who studies the relationship between art and religion.

"Clearly, that sort of ritualization of an historical event must
be some deep psychic need that human beings have to mark territory
as special," said Happel, chair of the department of religion
and religious education at the Catholic University of America.

Happel noted that such impromptu memorials do more than honor
the memories of those who are dead. They also let people express
their resistance to what has gone wrong in the world and, in many
cases, reach out for something larger than themselves.

"When someone dies out of season like this, our sense is, "This
isn't the way it ought to be,' so placing a memorial is a way
of saying (that) . . . we hope there is an Other who will right
this injustice," he said.

At Tampa Police Headquarters, that wish is literally carved in
granite. On the back of the memorial, down near the base, there
is a poem written by a retired Los Angeles police officer.

It begins: "I never dreamed it would be me, my name for all eternity,
recorded here at this hallowed place."

It ends: "I ask for all here from the past; Dear God, let my name
be the last."